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In fact, for viewers old enough to recall his original program, which ran between 1989 and 1994, the return of The Arsenio Hall Show last week was oddly disorienting. It felt less like riding shotgun into a brave, new world and more like getting pulled through a crack in the space-time continuum.

We often say time is cruel because it never slows down. But on television, time is cruelest when it grinds to a halt, when it gets trapped in the quicksand of nostalgia. And so on Monday, not long after Hall pumped his fist in that familiar windmill style, something became clear: the man once hailed as the future of late night was gambling his present by doubling down on his past.

He interviewed Chris Tucker, the comedian still best known for Rush Hour, a film released in 1998. He talked to Ice Cube about N.W.A., the rap band created in 1987. He joked with Lisa Kudrow about the lack of black characters on Friends, a TV show that premiered in 1994 and ended 10 seasons later.

George Lopez did some standup, something he’s been doing for a quarter-century. Magic Johnson, an NBA rookie in 1979, reminisced about his life. More than 35 years after their first magic trick, Penn and Teller performed another.

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All of this raised a few questions: Was Arsenio Hall in a coma for the last 19 years? Did someone scoop out his brain and store it in a cryogenic chamber, stuffing it back into his skull seconds before the start of this reincarnated venture?

Does he even know it’s 2013?

His first tour of duty was initially a success because the show felt like nothing else on late night in 1989. It crackled with a youthful sensibility and a shorthand blur of in-jokes and topical references. It exuded a nightclub vibe. In his multi-hued, baggy suits, helmeted by a crop of geometric hair and lit up by that toothy grin, Hall was the debonair emcee.

He was the bridge that could lead Middle America safely into urban terrain.

His guests were some of the biggest stars of the time, including Eddie Murphy, Paula Abdul, Madonna, Sylvester Stallone and Bill Cosby. But when flopped on a couch next to Hall, who worked with neither a desk nor cue cards, these stars were pulled into a lower orbit. We got to see a different side of them.

More important, we wanted to see a different side of them.

In recent weeks, a certain amount of revisionism has crept into the narrative. Hall walked away from the first show, he now says, to strike a greater life balance. The truth is, Paramount was ready to push him out by 1994.

Two years earlier, there was a tectonic shift in the late night landscape when Johnny Carson retired. David Letterman jumped to CBS after NBC, his long-time network, gave Carson’s The Tonight Show to Jay Leno.

In that war between Leno and Letterman, Hall became collateral damage. He started to bleed ratings and affiliates. He no longer mattered.

If Hall crashed and burned then, how will he cope now when there is so much more competition? What archetype can he claim for himself against the likes of Letterman, Leno, Jimmy Kimmel, Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Fallon, Carson Daly, Craig Ferguson, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert?

Hall wasn’t just a fixture of popular culture in the ’90s; he helped shape it. Can he do it again? Will his new show lure future presidential candidates looking to connect with key demographics, as Bill Clinton did in 1992 by donning shades and playing the saxophone? Will there be spontaneous protests (Queen Nation), thoughtful discourse (the L.A. riots), water-cooler awkwardness (his interview with Vanilla Ice) and a steady parade of A-listers who are disarmed by their 57-year-old host?

It seems unlikely.

The show did start with strong ratings this week. But much of this can be attributed to a simple fact: Hall is back on TV and viewers are curious. If quality and comedy are the test, then his first week gets a failing grade: lame videos, unfunny monologue jokes and incoherent interviews with guests from yesteryear.

Late night television is a lot like boxing. You need stamina. You need strategy. You need to land a few knockout punches every few weeks. As it stands now, Hall looks like a man who wandered into the ring in his pyjamas.

It was like watching a former prize fighter shadowbox with his own ghost.

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